


Give

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Background Relationships, Crack Treated Seriously, Fix-It of Sorts, Hannibal Loves Animals, Multi, Will Graham Has A Plan, fight me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 12:11:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12058743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: Will Graham has a plan.  (The plan involves dogs.  Literally no one is surprised.)





	Give

**Author's Note:**

> So this came about because [this](http://ciceqi.tumblr.com/post/165101537653/youre-not-fooling-anybody-hannibal). It was supposed to be straight-up crack, only Hannibal, like Marvel, seems to have broken my goofball comedy bone. o.O So instead you're looking at probably the most seriously-treated seriously-treated-crack I have ever written. Ahaha? Yup.

Will's loading vacuum-sealed packs of fish into the freezer in the barn when he hears the car drive up. He looks up with a frown, the sound of tires on the rutted path unusual enough he expects to hear the rolling crunch of the vehicle turning around once the driver realizes Will's driveway isn't a through-way. Instead the car coasts to a stop outside his house. The dogs, let out to roam, go nuts, but they sound...happy?

He doesn't quite hurry as he rearranges his freezer's contents, shifting his latest catch to the bottom. Instead he keeps an ear out as his dogs' excited barking reaches a crescendo that dies away to hopeful whines as a car door slams. A low, male voice says something Will can't quite catch, but the tone is familiar. Almost before he recognizes the voice, his hands slow in their task, realizing there's no rush. Still...what on earth has brought Dr. Lecter all the way out to Will's place, and why hasn't Will heard a knock at the house yet?

It's not a conscious decision to keep his footfalls light as he steps out of the barn, but he's glad he did. Hannibal looks as out of place as his flashy car on Will's front lawn: pristine and put together in a dark grey suit too nice for a Saturday morning drive. Definitely too nice to be surrounded by a mixed pack of mutts, yet Will feels no particular urge to go rescue him. The dogs are behaving, not jumping up to greet him, and when Hannibal holds out a hand, fingers curled and palm down, the dogs all sit obediently, tails thumping hard against the grass.

Hannibal's pleased smile is a small and secret thing, but Will knows that look. It's the hungry expression of a lifelong animal lover whose apartment building doesn't allow pets.

Suddenly Will feels a lot better about asking Hannibal to feed his dogs while he'd been out on the last case. He'd almost made other arrangements when Hannibal told him he didn't have pets of his own, worried he was asking too much of someone who might not even like dogs. Now he's pretty sure he made Hannibal's entire month by asking.

"Are you spoiling my dogs, Dr. Lecter?" he asks when he closes half the gap, a polite enough distance that he doesn't have to yell.

Hannibal turns with only the faintest start of surprise, schooling his face to innocence as he hides his hands behind his back. "Will. Good morning. I see you're already up and about."

"Dawn's a great time to fish." Will rolls his lips in, trying not to laugh. The dogs are shifting restlessly now, eyes imploring; Hannibal looks torn. "Well, don't tease them," Will mock-scolds in the next breath, letting his smile break free as he waves an invitation for Hannibal to carry on.

"Of course not," Hannibal scoffs with massive dignity, his gravitas spoiled when he instantly turns back to the dogs. Each one is given a chunk of what looks like Hannibal's homemade sausage. Will tries to ignore a stab of envy.

The dogs wag a greeting at Will, but most of their attention is fixed on Hannibal, whose smile has gone wistful again. Will gives himself a moment to study the man while Hannibal is distracted, eyes on the dogs and not on Will. Hannibal looks like the sort of uptight asshole who'd turn up his nose at muddy paws or stray hairs on his immaculate suits, but maybe Will's been seeing him out of context. Right now Hannibal looks content, in his element. With a pang of sympathy, Will almost finds himself wishing he lived closer so he could invent reasons for Hannibal to come over and get his fix.

"So why don't you have a dog?" Will asks, shoving his hands, still chilled from the freezer, into his pockets.

Hannibal sighs. "With the amount of traveling I do and the hours I work, I'm rarely home. Perhaps one day if I retire."

"If, not when?"

"I like to keep busy," Hannibal replies with an easy shrug. "Too busy to be a responsible owner, I fear. For now I'll have to content myself by living vicariously through you."

Will chuckles, ducking his head a little as unexpected warmth settles in behind his ribs. He's gotten that reaction a time or two in the past, but once the number of his little pack climbed above three, most people started seeing him as a Crazy Dog Guy.

"Well, knock yourself out," he says, pulling a hand out of his pocket to ruffle ears as the dogs sniff at him in hopes of seconds. "So what brings you by? Business, or did you just miss the dogs?"

"Well, I happened to be in the neighborhood," Hannibal says, ignoring Will's quiet huff of laughter at the ridiculousness of the excuse, "and I thought you might like breakfast. But if you've already eaten...."

"Just coffee," Will says. It's a white lie, but he's prepared to brazen through it if the house still smells like toast. With any luck Hannibal won't notice.

"Wonderful. If it's not too much trouble," he says, turning back to his car to hook a bulging pair of reusable grocery bags from the back seat, "I cooked at my hotel the last time, but this time I thought I might borrow your kitchen."

The idea of someone making themselves at home _in_ his home sets off a tiny thrill of discomfort in the pit of Will's stomach, but he pushes it aside. "Trouble? You're the one cooking," he reminds, hunching one shoulder with an equally lopsided smile. "Be my guest. Literally."

He wouldn't have taken Hannibal as the type to appreciate such a rotten joke, but the corners of Hannibal's eyes crinkle in genuine amusement. There's no accounting for taste, though Hannibal's got plenty where it counts.

He makes one hell of an omelet, is absolutely delighted to have extra time to spend with the dogs.

***

When the FBI team leads Will out of his house, they lead his dogs out right behind him. The dogs are all leashed, but as a last professional courtesy, they forego handcuffs in Will's case. There's a black van and a black SUV waiting, and the terror spreading through Will is also two-pronged. If he did this, if he can't prove he _didn't_ do this--and he wouldn't, God, he _wouldn't_ \--he knows he might be facing the death penalty. Knows his little pack might be headed for the same, because who's going to want to adopt a murderer's dogs, especially one who--

His stomach hitches, and he swallows back bile.

When he settles into the back of the SUV, he glances sidelong out the window and catches a familiar shape in the corner of his eye: Hannibal, standing on the porch and staring after him. For a moment he's hit with a ludicrous hope, but he smothers it before it can take root. Hannibal would have dogs of his own if he felt able to care for one. Will can't ask him to take this on for him, no matter how worried he is. All he can do is hope for the best.

***

_Dodged a bullet_ , he keeps thinking as he's hauled away for a second time, even past the ache in his shoulder from the bullet Jack put in him. Only it turns out Alana didn't dodge anything with him, because he _didn't do it_. He knows it and Lecter knows it, but no one else is listening, and the only one catching any lucky breaks here is the good doctor, and maybe Will's dogs.

Christ, his _dogs_. They’ve probably been eating evidence from day one, but if Lecter...if he fed them Abigail...Will's going to strangle the life from him with his own two hands.

At least they're safe with Alana, and thank God Will didn't break down and beg Lecter to take care of them when he'd had the chance. Lecter's long past the point of escalation, surely--practicing on animals as a warm-up for humans--but Will wouldn't put it past him to hurt them just to hurt him.

So maybe somebody here dodged a bullet after all. It just wasn't him.

***

It's weird being dropped off at his house after his stay in the state hospital, walking up the snow-covered path to his own front door but feeling like a stranger. He's supposedly a free man, but he doesn't feel free. He was _found_ innocent, not proven; his lack of guilt was arrived at through process of elimination, not because he convinced a single soul.

When the screen door swings open, he expects Alana to step out to meet him, but a furry stampede bolts across the porch and down the steps, barking joyously. His own wide grin feels unfamiliar as he crouches down to greet the dogs, ruffling thick winter coats and letting himself be snuffled over. It unthaws a frozen part of him, this proof that he's been missed, of a trust that's never wavered. It almost distracts him from the crunch of approaching footsteps.

"Welcome home," Alana says as she approaches, hands tucked in her pockets.

"Thank you," Will says, gratitude drowning out everything more complicated for the moment. "Thank you for looking after them. They seem happy," he adds through a huff of laughter as Buster comes racing up on his shorter legs, always at the tail of the pack.

Alana's faint smile doesn't change, but her hands twist and pull at the black leash she holds, discomfort bleeding through her cordial mask. "Happy to see you."

"Who's this?" he asks, examining a spotty, red-and-white dog, maybe a heeler mix of some kind.

"Applesauce. She's mine. She likes applesauce," Alana explains as she finally closes the distance between them, her smile wry. More than anything she sounds tired. "I rescued her," she says as she clips on the dog's leash, pulling her gently away from the others.

"Picking up some of my bad habits?" Will asks as he rises. He's trying for a teasing tone, but from the small space of silence that follows, he must have missed the mark.

"Picking up your good habits." She eyes him steadily, weighing her words or maybe whether she wants to speak at all. Will's not sure he wants to hear it or even what he wants to hear. "You challenged my whole framework of assumptions about the way you are. The way I think you are," she corrects herself without missing a beat.

He doesn't want to snap at her, not when she'd believed so firmly through everything that he wasn't at fault, but it stings that she'd still believed he was to blame.

"Well, the way you think I am isn't always a reliable guide to who I am," he says, holding on to a light tone by his fingernails.

Alana doesn't flinch from the accusation. "I was wrong about you."

"Because you didn't believe me? Or in me?" Tension's threading through his voice despite his best attempts to remain calm, the scream he's been choking back since their conversation in the interview room clawing its way up his throat to lodge behind his teeth. "Because you let me question my sanity, my sense of reality?"

"Because you tried to kill Hannibal," Alana says flatly, and now he can see it, the banked anger behind her eyes. "You're wrong about him, Will."

And God, doesn't it just figure that it's all come back to Hannibal yet again, like there's no part of his life left uncontaminated by his influence. It doesn't even matter than he's been exonerated for Cassie Boyle and the others. He's going to be known forever as the nutjob who sent a bigger nutjob to kill poor Dr. Lecter.

Which...fair enough...he is. He's even made his peace with it, after a fashion, same as he'd had to do with Garrett Jacob Hobbs. He'd known exactly what he was doing at the time, and he'd meant to do it. It doesn't matter that Lecter didn't die. He'd pulled the trigger in both cases, and he no longer has to wonder if he's only capable of killing or whether he's also capable of murder. The jury is no longer out on that one.

But that doesn't make him a _monster_.

"No, you're wrong about him, Alana. You see the best in him. I...don't." What hurts, though, what really fucking burns about this entire situation, is that he can so clearly recall a time when he had. When he'd actually believed that maybe, _maybe_ he wasn't alone. That maybe for the first time there was someone who could...not understand him, maybe, but who was willing to meet him halfway, who wanted to peer over the tops of Will's walls not to study what went on behind them but just because he liked the view.

He crouches down again to busy himself with the dogs, no longer wanting to have this conversation, but Alana just doesn't let up.

"What was done to you doesn't excuse what you did."

His strained smile freezes. He knows she's only saying that because she doesn't believe that what was done to him was done _by Hannibal_ , but that...that burns a little too.

"Are you going to try to hurt Hannibal again? Is he safe?" she asks.

He gets it then. He gets it and he really wishes he didn't.

"From me or for you?"

She doesn't answer, and that's exactly what he was afraid of.

"He's dangerous, Alana," he says as he rises again, walking away this time. "I suggest you stay as far away from Hannibal Lecter as you can."

Too bad he can't take his own advice. Even he can see that it's actually worth listening to.

***

Two hours later, and he's standing in Lecter's half-lit kitchen with a gun in his hand, questioning everything he thought he knew. Not whether Hannibal is the Ripper. That's real, like every last betrayal is real. There's no question in his mind that Lecter deserves to die. What's failing to compute is why he's standing here, the muzzle of his gun six inches from Hannibal's temple, but completely unable to pull the trigger.

He can't for the life of him understand why Hannibal's just waiting for it, eyes closed and face turned away, so that Will doesn't even have to struggle to keep his chin up or his gaze steady.

He's not afraid of prison, not anymore, or of the consequences that will follow. He'd meant it when he said he wasn't innocent. He just doesn't know how righteous he's going to feel killing a man who seems determined to make it easy for him, the way Lecter always somehow seems to make things easy, smoothing over Will's rough spots until he feels...shored up. Patched, if not mended. Except of course that what Hannibal's using to fill in the holes is _his_ , not Will's alone.

But part of it is Will's, isn't it? That's the problem.

Will thumbs the safety back on when he can't stand looking at Lecter's composed face a second longer, slinks away confused when he'd been fired by purpose when he arrived. He knows what he's doing. He'd meant to do it. Hannibal would have _let_ him do it.

Maybe that's where it all falls apart.

***

"All right," Jack says as they approach the stables where the newest and possibly strangest murder Will's ever been asked to look at occurred. A dead horse is one thing, a dead woman another, but a dead woman found inside a dead horse? Where is he even supposed to begin with that? "You've got the file and the photos, but the scene was cleared away this morning. If you need to take a break, though, you _let me know_. We can stop and maybe try again later."

"I'll be fine, Jack," Will insists, wondering if there's a fairy tale out there that covers the opposite of crying wolf. If there is, he's lived it. He understands where Jack's skeptical look is coming from.

"I'll take your word for it. At least I won't get a repeat of this morning," he adds with a snort as they step inside.

It takes a moment for Will's eyes to adjust to the shadows inside the barn. Though he's never had much to do with bigger animals--all of them well out of the price range of a poor kid who'd grown up off the boatyards--the scent of hay and horse and manure is a homey one, the smell of long drives through the country as his dad moved them from job to job. The horses peering over their stall doors all look calm, inquisitive, beautiful even under their fuzzy winter coats. Show animals, probably. Something tells him Dr. Lecter would know.

Will shakes his head, distracted. "What happened this morning?"

"Nothing...just a repeat of you and that cat," Jack says, mouth tugging wryly to one side. "You know, I really thought back then that you were more worried about the Nichols' cat than their daughter. It seemed to fit with how...difficult you seemed to find connecting with people."

"Thanks," Will says flatly. "Wait, so there was a cat? It's not in the report."

"No cat. But Dr. Lecter barely looked at Sarah Craber. I'm pretty sure if you asked him right now who the murder victim was, he'd say it was the horse."

Will opens his mouth to bitterly rebut that but finds he has nothing to say. Hannibal Lecter is a sadist and a killer, but nothing about him has ever fit an easy mold. Should it even surprise Will that Lecter has a genuine affinity for animals? People who find other humans problematic often do. It just requires a level of empathy Hannibal shouldn't be capable of.

"At least horses aren't rude," Will mutters, just wanting to do his job and get out, and not think about Lecter until he has to.

It's easier said than done.

***

Sitting in Peter Bernadone's makeshift zoo, trying to pull the name of a murderer from his halting account, Will stumbles upon his own answer almost by accident.

 _Do you have a shadow, Peter? Someone only you can see? Someone you considered a friend. He made you feel less alone. Until you saw what he really is_.

Simple as it is, this is why he can't kill Hannibal: because everyone knows there's only one way to kill a shadow, and if he's going to step that far into darkness, he desperately doesn't want to go or come back alone.

Something's got to give, to change. He just knows that it can't be him, not this time.

***

Hours later--after Clark Ingram, Peter's social worker, is named, brought in for questioning, and to Will's utter frustration, let go--he's back on the road again, but not with Jack Crawford. Without a confession or any real evidence, Jack's hands are tied, but Will knows that Peter's innocent, that Ingram is dangerous, and that he knows one man who's game for absolutely anything if it means he can secure a ringside seat to Will's inner turmoil.

When Hannibal opens the door to his office waiting room that night, Will rises from his chair but doesn't step inside. "I need your help," he says instead. No explanations, and yes, it is a test. Either Hannibal's with him one hundred percent, or Will is _only_ a game, and in that case--

Hannibal tilts his head a fraction and reaches back inside his office to turn off the lights. "Where are we going?"

The first time Will rode in Hannibal's ridiculously expensive car, he'd made some joke about how he could guess the price tag from the sheer amount of leg room provided. The last time before this, he'd slept like a baby--feverish, fitful, the subject of a manhunt, but utterly convinced of his own safety in Hannibal's hands.

Hannibal puts on classical music this time, quiet and unobtrusive, and they don't speak for miles and miles.

"You look like a man who has suffered an irrevocable loss," Hannibal says at last, long past the point where the silence has moved through uncomfortable to fiercely ignored and then out the other side.

"I'm trying to prevent one," Will says, eyes fixed straight out the windshield at the empty road ahead, the lowering cloud cover lit a lurid pink by moon-glare off snow.

"Do you think if you save Peter Bernadone, you can save yourself?"

"Save myself from what, Dr. Lecter?" He can't entirely keep the mockery out of his voice, but this dance is getting old. He wonders if Hannibal thinks he's wearing a wire, what he'd have to do to prove he isn't. Whether he'd get a straight answer out of Hannibal even if he could convince him. He wonders what he'd be prepared to give in exchange for those answers and can't quite find a limit to set his back against.

"From who you perceive me to be."

"I'm afraid I need to be saved from who _you_ perceive _me_ to be." Not content to frame him for murder, it seems obvious in hindsight that Hannibal's been pushing him to kill all along, but Will can't fathom why. Just to see him crack? To ruin him? To see how far he can push an ordinary man to go? And how does Will reconcile that with Hannibal's seemingly-genuine forgiveness for sending Matthew Brown to kill him, the way he'd practically held his breath to see if Will would accept Brown's attempt to claim the copycat killings as his own? How could he look so _fucking sorry_ that he wasn't able to give Will back the friend he'd believed in when Will saw right through the ruse?

Hannibal Lecter is the biggest headache in Will's entire miserable life, and considering what he's been through, that's saying something.

"Many troublesome behaviors strike when you are uncertain of yourself," Hannibal offers, like uncertainty is really Will's biggest problem. "Peter Bernadone lies in the same darkness that holds you."

Will breathes out a short sigh. "No, I'm alone in that darkness." He hopes so, anyway. He may have deserved to stumble his way in, but Peter doesn't.

"You're not alone, Will. I'm standing right beside you."

The back of Will's neck prickles with gooseflesh, those words so close to what he'd been thinking just that afternoon, but worse is the tiny, idiot flicker of warmth that tries its hardest to stir to life behind his ribs.

***

Walking in through a door left cracked to find all of Peter's animal cages emptied out and in disarray leaves Will sickened with dread. He takes one look at the chaos and turns on his heel, stalking right back out again. He doesn't need imagination or intuition to tell him where to go: Peter's horse had been gone from its paddock when they drove up, so the barn is the only logical choice.

Finding another dead horse with a sewn-up belly, Peter kneeling beside it with a threaded needle in hand, it's hard not to feel like a failure. He knows intimately the space Peter inhabits, knows the danger and the temptation to make it all just stop. He'd hoped he could spare Peter that, but his timing's just never that good.

"Peter," he says gently as he makes his approach, moving slow and careful. He's not afraid of sparking violence, but Peter's brain could well be trying to shake itself apart from stress as it is. He doesn't want to make it worse. "Is your social worker in that horse...?"

He doesn't turn to look, but he hears Hannibal's measured footsteps come to an abrupt halt behind him. Granted that's a question Will never thought he'd have to ask either, but he still wants to grit his teeth and ask Hannibal to _keep up_.

"Yes," Peter admits, turning his head a little but making no attempt to look at either of them. He looks smaller somehow, his narrow, awkward frame curled in on itself, his dark coat and the rooster's tail of his black hair slicked in places with blood. "I used to have--used to have a horrible fear of, of...of hurting anything," he says in his disjointed, rambling way. "But...he helped m-me get over that." He hangs his head. "Feels so abnormal."

"An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior," Hannibal replies. Will's not sure Peter's in the right frame of mind to wrap his head around one of Hannibal's Byzantine pep talks, but the calm, steady tone of his voice has Peter's shoulders unspooling their tension in a rush.

"I think...think he deserves to die," Peter says, offering it up like a secret he's kept close to his heart.

"But...." Will shakes his head when his voice fails him, swallowing back his regret. "But you didn't deserve to kill him, Peter." Crouching down at Peter's side, he lays a careful hand on Peter's back between his shoulder blades. "I want you to come with me."

He walks Peter away from the nested bodies, Hannibal's footsteps following part of the way before veering off as Will and Peter round a corner. Maybe he's calling Jack, or maybe he's keeping watch on the scene in case someone comes to investigate and start a fuss. At the moment Will doesn't really care.

Peter seems lost, wandering a slow circle once Will lets him go, his angular face screwed up with anxiety. He looks like he might burst into tears at any moment. Ingram doesn't deserve them, but it's probably not Ingram Peter's mourning.

"What was done to you," Will tries to reassure him, "was cruelty for cruelty's sake."

Peter opens his mouth and closes it again, frowning. "I thi--I think I hate him."

"I envy you your hate." God, does he ever. He _longs_ for that kind of simplicity. "It makes it easier when you know how to feel."

Peter tips his head to one side, his frown crumpling in puzzlement. "What...makes what easier?"

For the first time, Will wonders how much Peter actually understands of what he's done; the damage to his brain from the kick that scarred him might be worse than Will thinks. "Killing," he says simply, his patience for talking circles around things at an all-time low.

Peter looks stunned. "I--I didn't kill him," he protests. "I just wanted him to understand what it's like to--to suffocate and to--to experience the destiny that he created."

Will's lips part as understanding sinks in, shock and relief welling up in equal measure. On the one hand, Peter _won_ \--gave Ingram a taste of his own medicine without becoming a murderer in the process.

On the other, Will's left a dangerous killer who just murdered a horse with a hammer loose at their backs, unguarded by anyone but the _fucking Chesapeake Ripper_.

"Stay here," he tells Peter, drawing his gun as he silently jogs back the way they came.

While honestly glad he missed the big reveal, Will's not surprised to find exactly the scene he expects as he eases around the corner. Hannibal's standing in the middle of the aisle, right across from a small sheep pen, and Will swears to God that if Hannibal left him to deal with a traumatized man in need of qualified psychiatric help--

He grits his teeth and traps a frustrated sigh. Of course Hannibal was petting the fucking sheep. It's _Hannibal_.

Ingram, like Hannibal, has his back to Will, but he's a lot less collected. Drenched in gore, he sputters and roars as he snatches his blood-stained hammer off the floor, whipping around with the clear intention of finding Peter and using it again.

He draws up short when he finds Hannibal standing in his path.

"Mr. Ingram," Hannibal says. Hands in his pockets, he's the very picture of blithe unconcern, and Will can't help comparing the two: Ingram wrecked and bested, ham-handed in his attempts to force events to go his way; Hannibal immaculate, untroubled, content even now to stand back and watch his intricate design play out. There's no way he doesn't know Will is there, but if Hannibal feels even a flicker of unease at having Will at his back with a gun in his hand, it's not visible from where Will's standing.

"Might want to crawl back in there if you know what's good for you," Hannibal continues on, mildly at first, but with an unmistakable edge of coldness creeping in towards the end.

Ingram huffs and puffs, shoulders bunching like he's weighing the odds of his hammer against one sharply-dressed, unarmed man until Hannibal steps casually aside.

The look on Ingram's face when he sees Will and his gun is enormously gratifying. "Officer," he says, dropping the hammer at once and sinking to his knees before Will even has to ask, holding his hands out to his sides. "I'm the victim here."

The rage that sparks in him leaves him shaking inside, but his hands remain steady. "I'm not an officer," he bites out, holding his temper in check by the barest of margins. "I'm Peter's friend."

"Peter's confused," Ingram says with utter certainty, eyes not wavering a fraction.

He's heard those words used before, not just about him, but there's a certain horror to them now he's not sure he'll ever be able to shake. Peter's confused, and he's confused, and maybe they'll tell him he's confused about Peter--maybe only he will ever know the truth. "I'm not," he says, bringing his wavering gun back into position, firming his stance.

Maybe the confusion will never stop for him, but Will knows how to stop it for Peter.

"Pick up the hammer," he orders, twitching the barrel of his gun in that direction.

"Will," Hannibal warns on his right, but Will's in no mood to listen.

Cocking his gun, he steps forward a pace, dropping his bracing hand and textbook pose to take on an executioner's stance. At point-blank range, one round will take care of Ingram for good.

" _Pick it up_."

"It won't feel the same, Will," Hannibal reminds him, shifting closer with his hands still in his pockets. "It won't feel like killing me."

"It doesn't have to," Will says, watching Ingram's growing terror with something akin to hunger.

Hannibal, against all reason, comes closer. "You did the best anyone could do for Peter, but don't do this for him." He sounds so fucking reasonable, but Will's just waiting for the other shoe to drop. "If you're going to do this, Will, you have to do it for yourself."

He wants to yell at Hannibal to make up his damn mind, because a killer is a killer is a killer. What does it matter whether he pulls the trigger in self-administered justice or to make himself _feel better_? Ingram will still be dead, and Hannibal will still have gotten his way.

"Please don't," Ingram chokes out, nearly in tears.

"You would be wise to remain silent, Mr. Ingram," Hannibal shuts him down, voice firm.

Ingram trembles, breathless with panic. It's a good look on him.

"Will," Hannibal murmurs, low and intimate, forcing him to listen closely. "This is not the reckoning you promised yourself."

A shiver runs through Will that never quite reaches a peak, but it's not from fear or even the wrongness of what he's contemplating. He wants to leave a collage of bone and blood and brain across the floor, and he wants desperately not to want it. He wants Hannibal to stop being so goddamn changeable, pushing him in one direction one moment and in the next pulling him back. He wants things to go quiet, when he can barely even remember what that was like anymore.

Tightening his finger on the trigger is almost a relief. At least he'll have picked a direction, set _something_ in motion at last.

The empty click when Hannibal intercepts the revolver's hammer with his thumb doesn't make _sense_ , not at first. Will watches in a daze as Ingram collapses at last into helpless sobs, as Hannibal gently takes the gun from Will's hand. He'd been committed to the act, but Hannibal had stopped him. Why the hell did Hannibal stop him?

"With all my knowledge and intrusion, I could never entirely predict you," Hannibal says, wrapping his free hand around the back of Will's neck, holding him steady and close. Holding him _together_ through the strangest come-down Will's ever experienced, half adrenaline rush and half catharsis. "I can feed the caterpillar, and I can whisper through the chrysalis, but what hatches follows its own nature and is beyond me." There's a trace of laughter in his last words, not mocking but amazed, like Will's done something to surprise him.

Will drags his unfocused eyes up, forces them to sharpen on the moment, and finds Hannibal smiling. He wishes to the depth of his being that he knew how he felt about that, but all he can focus on is the grounding heat of contact.

Hannibal nods once, decisive, and lets him go just as Will starts to think about pulling away. "See to Peter," Hannibal instructs, hand just skimming Will's shoulder as it drops to Hannibal's side. "I'll take care of the rest."

Will doesn't point out that he's not the psychiatrist here. The truth is, if Hannibal leaves him alone with Ingram, he's probably going to try to finish the job. Instead he turns without a word to make his way back to the other end of the barn, leaving Ingram to Hannibal.

He can't quite make out what Hannibal says to Ingram as he walks away, but Ingram's still on his knees when a team arrives to take him into custody, and he doesn't say one word about Will's little stunt with the gun.

"I'm getting whiplash, Dr. Lecter," Will accuses flatly when he's found his voice again, the two of them standing off to the side as pictures are snapped, evidence noted and tagged. "And you look like a Bond villain," he adds, glancing at the grey cat purring in Hannibal's arms, one of the few animals from Peter's collection they've been able to locate and catch.

"It'd be unkind to return her to a cage in the midst of all this commotion," Hannibal is quick to point out. Will doesn't miss the way he cradles the cat ever more carefully to his chest, or the way the cat _allows_ it. It's ridiculous--not just Hannibal's fondness for animals, but the way they seem to love him right back, in blatant contradiction to every myth regarding their supposedly infallible judgment of character. Will's own dogs adore the man, hogging every bit of his attention they can get whenever he stops by, which Hannibal indulges with surprising patience. Hell, if the man had pets of his own, he'd be too busy spoiling them to cause anybody any--

The idea that hits Will then is pure madness. It might even be dangerous, though not--and this is _worse_ \--for him. It's going to require him to think long and hard about what he really wants, what his endgame is, what's _important_ , but if it works...?

Something has to give, but maybe it _won't_ be him, or at least not him alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Title was nearly "Magnetism" for exactly the reasons you're thinking, only I figured squirrels would be overkill. At least I didn't actually write the scene where Hannibal coaxes the stray bird down off the light fixtures in the lab like a _bona fide Disney prince._ :D


End file.
